Queen Anne/Magnolia News
OPINION

August 18, 1999

Ramblings/Gary McDaniel

 

 

There's more serious business than funny in the sport of auto racing

Recently, one morning and afternoon, more than 40 brightly-painted, 18-wheel tractor-trailer rigs rolled into Seattle International Raceway (SIR) in Kent for the Prolong Super Lubricants, National Hot Rod Association's (NHRA), Northwest Nationals. (Whew!)

 

In the trailers were racecars that could accelerate to more than 300-hundred miles-an-hour in a short quarter mile. Racecars that loaded their drivers with more G-forces than a Navy aircraft carrier pilot and that in the first 60 feet are running over a hundred miles an hour after only 9/10s of a second. That's quick!

 

This drag race was only roughly halfway through the season races that make up the Winston Championship of we races all over the country. (At each race you accumulate points and there's a lot of money at the end of the year. I think I've got all the race sponsors mentioned now.

 

Eric Berge, owner and manger of Werner's Collision in Queen Anne, and I recently attended the races there. Professional drag racing isn't a low-dollar and a few greasy kids-on-the-outside-of-town, kinda thing anymore. It's a multi-million dollar entertainment business full of media-savvy young professionals.

 

When the racecars emerge from their aluminum cocoons (the nestle tightly in the roof of the trailer, up over a complete, industrial workshop), the work starts immediately in the preparation for Sunday afternoon.

 

Down below, in the spotless drawers and cabinets of the shined aluminum workshops, are enough spare parts and tools to put the racecar back in running condition after nearly any on-track emergency situation.

 

Like, say, uh, the engine tried to destroy itself by eating itself as it tried to run harder and faster. It was making too much horsepower for the strength of a particular part to withstand. The whole key to the puzzle, the trick to running a fuel-burning engine, is to balance the horsepower available with the strength of the car's components.

 

Get all the power to the ground, utilizing all the power you can build without breaking anything, and that's drag racing. Oh - you've got to beat the other guy, too, in the next lave over, who's trying to just as hard to make more horsepower than you.

 

This is why you have highly-educated, engineer crew chiefs drawing salaries in the high six figures. Professional drag racing is a very expensive game to play, with millions of advertising dollars being spent. This is a business.

 

There are no Mom-n-Pop operations when you're playing in this world. We're talking briefcase toting, I've-got-a-sunglasses-contract, cell phone connected personalities who are either constantly on the TV or in the pages of magazines.

 

Except one.

 

When the black, white and gold, Kelvlarbodied, Pontiac Trans-Am in Penthouse magazine livery rolls out of the back of Jim and Diane Dunn's transporter, there's a whole lot of family working on the blown, nitromethene fueled, Double "A" Funny Car.

 

The patriarch, Jim Dunn, has been racing fuel-burning hemi's since before I started to watch him every weekend in the early 1960s. In the 1970s an award-winning documentary, "Funny Car Summer," was made that followed Jim as he traveled the summer, racing nationally and learning how to make the only successful, rear-engined, funny car work. Although Dunn's now an aging retired fireman, he's still a smart innovator, too.

 

Diane Dunn is Jim's wife and she's the smiling red-haired, blue-eyed woman with the clipboard who keeps the whole show running. Diane's duties aren't only administrative on race days she physically folds the race car's braking parachutes and mixes the very sensitive fuel requirement. (One of the ways to make horsepower is to run more nitro. Too much grenades the engine).

 

Dunn's son Jon twists the wrenches along with crewmen Joe Turner and Rian Konno, (except that in today's pit where modern pneumatic wrenches speed every bolt turn.) In 90 minutes they can have the car disassembled, put back together and hopefully running better than it did last time.

 

As crew chief, Jim watches all the computer data that is gathered from sensors all over the car, each time that the engine is started. By looking at the various data, Jim can tune both the car and engine to run at optional levels.

 

Also working hard on the race car is Frank Redregon, who drives the car. Frank is one of the three Redregon brothers who currently drive funny cars. And when you win, it's always sweetest to beat your brother. Tomorrow," Berge told me, "We're closing down the shop, and I'm going to bring my crew of painters and body men out to the drags. Besides the fun of going to the drags the nice perk that that is I want them to watch how these crews work together and point out why they do things certain ways. A couple of them have never seen a drag car running fuel race before."

 

The next morning, Berge's crew accompanied us out to SIR. Lin Valdez, M.C. Gamble, Richard Harlow and Don Whitehouse all got a dose of loud intensive, foot-to-the-floor automobile racing.

 

After the crew had watched from the stands for awhile and Berge had made sure that they each had a corn dog and a coke. (That is part of the ambience, after all, some of these guys have never been to a drag race and otherwise might miss the total experience.) Berge then leads them over to Dunn's pit, just as the race car had returned from making a run and Dunn's crew were disassembling the engine to perform all the required maintenance.

 

"As you watch these guys work on this." Berge told his crew, "notice that they're all working together toward a common goal. Each team member has his own specific job.

 

"Tucker has got the right side of the engine," Berge pointed out, "and Dan is the 'driver, he's got the bottom end and has to crawl under the engine. Diane mixes fuel, helps pack the parachutes and keeps track of all the books and does the PR. Jim is the master of the tune-up. He looks at all the computer data, from each time the engine is even started, and decides which of a myriad of adjustments to make to produce better results on the next run."

 

"This is the way the body s hop should run," Berge emphasized," everybody doing their own job. Sure they're helping each other, but they each got their specific job that they're responsible for."

 

I asked Valdez how he liked his first drag race. "The exhaust from the car is so loud and the fumes make my eyes water, and I can hardly breathe," Valdez told me. Now he knows why Dunn and all the rest of the crews wear air-filtration masks any time the eng engine's running.

 

Hang around any professional pit for long and one of the first things you notice is that one of the keys to a successful racer is a clean race car. Crew members are constantly wiping various parts of the car down. You can always spot a leak or a crack faster on a completely clean surface.

 

Keeping everything clean goes for the transporter/shop too. It's a lot more efficient to work in a clean environment. If anyone on the race team has a spare moment, they're busy with a wipe-rag in their hand and a spray bottle of cleaner.

 

That's the way things have to be in any professional business endeavor if you want it to succeed. You have to work at it and pay attention. O.K., I'll get off my little soapbox now.

 

Speaking of professional, once again SIR and NHRA had a special Courtesy Transport from Sonoma, Calif., handling the responsibility of making sure that any disabled race fans had an enjoyable experience. This hard working crew, run by Joe Perron and Cyndi Kettler, keep the disabled parking free of undeserving free-loaders, keep the disabled viewing areas unblocked and provide accessible rest and toilet facilities. They've also got a couple of carts that they use to help haul people around in.

 

Special Courtesy Transport provides the best Special Needs services that I have ever experienced at any large public gathering. A few of our so-called major-league sports franchises could take a few lessons here.